I wonder why they're not using thermal cameras. Snakes are ectothermic, but they still show up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOL0RocIUI0
Also consider that there are plenty of other native snakes the same size as a small python that will show up as a false positive on a thermal camera.
For magnification at least, doesnt help with hunting pythons probably, you can use the focusing lenses for laser cutters, which typically work in thermal wavelengths, to turn a handheld thermal camera into a microscope. Or is it a "milliscope" i guess owing to the limit imposed by the coarser wavelegths.
I wonder how much optical solutions could be solved with the "wrong" lens paired with a well trained transformer or similar modern AI. If google or apple can deblur your family photos is it unrealistic to think you could deblur a thermal image acquired using found lenses?
Crystallography algorithms might even work out of the box? Or be adaptable hopefully?
Maybe some combination of cameras (thermal, traditional, maybe even Lidar) combining data and processing it to detect at least likely pythons.
It wouldn't have to be perfect, but I imagine such a solution could be more effective than even the most experienced and talented human python spotter.